Page 173 - The Resilient Organization

160 Part Four: Step 3. Rehearsing a Culture of Resilience

SET THEM FREE

Nonetheless, many of us persist in our belief that the best-performing,
most complex organizations are those inhabited and managed by profes-
sionals. We see in Max Weber’s concept of bureaucracy the significance
of professional specialization. The idealization was an attempt to make
organizations more accountable, capable, and reliable. As such, the com-
mitment to professionalization was highly successful in increasing produc-
tion efficiency and reliability. Yet at the same time, we lost some of the
freedom to explore that came with amateurism.
Allow me be provocative to make this point. The Industrial Revolution
may have made us rich but it also subjugated us. This servitude is of a sub-
tle kind: we get paid for doing what we are told to do. Now you may argue
that—as a superb knowledge worker—you really enjoy your work. So do I.
You may indeed love your window office or even find your cubicle more
bearable than cartoonist Scott Adams did. But in accepting this low stan-
dard, we have all missed the point. Fool yourself all you want by evoking
the pleasure of paid work—your psyche will tell you that you, or at least
the part of you that is at work, has been bought. This may be why so many
people check that which is the best of themselves at the door when they
come to work.
In the competition with the work drudge, we believe that amateurs are
making a comeback. The amateur rebellion is constituted on the strongest
grounds—personal beliefs, aspirations, and intrinsic motivations—all that
is best about us as human beings. Amateurs, in Freeman Dyson’s words,
are a measure of the freedom of a society: “In almost all the varied walks
of life, amateurs have more freedom to experiment and innovate” (Dyson,
2002). Amateurs are not under pressure for short-term performance or
strict job descriptions or titles, nor are they under managerial surveil-
lance. Amateurs have the independence to innovate. They may take time
to learn and move from field to field, finding creativity in the convergence
of technology and the combinatorial possibilities found when crossing
different industries and professional specialties (Johansson, 2004). There
is indeed value in being a dilettante. Rather than being bound by profes-
sional conventions that might be outdated and no longer productive,